Laak clearly cultivates his unstable image, and has also said that tournaments are harder to win now because of the TV exposure of his wild style.

However I suspect he is properly tight in the beginnings of tournaments, and has probably found that he can use his famous loose image to his advantage early on. TV tournaments also have wild blinds at the end to facilitate a lot of action, so his loosening up is warranted to some extent by the time he reaches the television.

However Laak still has a wild streak above and beyond the prudent.. (contrasted with say.. the kind of 'prudent wildness' that Harrington displays when the blinds begin to force action) Laak draws great strength from that wild beast that wants to raise raise raise... but he struggles to keep it reined in. It gets out at the wrong times on occation, the true mastery of the "ultra-rager" style is knowing how to employ it selectively. It is a hard style to manage for both the opponent and the practitioner -- Laak seems to desire variance at the high levels of the tournament, even when he is an underdog or is flipping for his whole stack... probably comes from having a movie star gf